There is a time to move on, a time to let go . . . and a time to fly. Anxiety rules Annemarie Zimmer’s days—the fear that her relationship with the man she loves is growing stagnant; the fear that her equestrian daughter Eva’s dreams of Olympic glory will carry her far away from her mother . . . and into harm’s way. For five months, Annemarie has struggled to make peace with her past. But if she cannot let go, the personal battles she has won and the heights she has achieved will have all been for naught. It is a time of change at Maple Brook Horse Farm, when loves must be confronted head-on and fears must be saddled and broken. But it is an unanticipated tragedy that will most drastically alter the fragile world of one remarkable family—even as it flings open gates that have long confined them, enabling them all to finally ride headlong and free. “Sara Gruen writes with passionate precision about horses and their humans and the healing power of love. Annemarie Zimmer is the best kind of character―just like ourselves, with a lot to learn and even more to give.” - Maryanne Stahl, author of Forgive the Moon and The Opposite Shore There is a time to move on, a time to let go . . . and a time to fly. Anxiety rules Annemarie Zimmer’s days—the fear that her relationship with the man she loves is growing stagnant; the fear that her equestrian daughter Eva’s dreams of Olympic glory will carry her far away from her mother . . . and into harm’s way. For five months, Annemarie has struggled to make peace with her past. But if she cannot let go, the personal battles she has won and the heights she has achieved will have all been for naught. It is a time of change at Maple Brook Horse Farm, when loves must be confronted head-on and fears must be saddled and broken. But it is an unanticipated tragedy that will most drastically alter the fragile world of one remarkable family—even as it flings open gates that have long confined them, enabling them all to finally ride headlong and free. Sara Gruen is the author of the New York Times bestseller Water for Elephants and Riding Lessons . She lives with her husband and three children in a conservation community outside Chicago. Flying Changes By Sara Gruen HarperCollins Publishers Copyright ©2007 Sara Gruen All right reserved. ISBN: 9780061241093 Chapter One I awake with a start -- one moment I'm riding Harry, my zephyr half, my phantom boy, and the next my eyelids flicker and I'm staring at the ceiling. When I realize I'm not on his back at all -- I'm huddled under an eiderdown in the freezing bedroom of the apartment above my mother's stable -- I close my eyes and lie perfectly still, trying to coax him to stay. But it's no use -- his body dissolves, the reins melt in my hands, and he gallops off, ephemeral as breath on the wind. I move not a muscle, listening as his hoofbeats fade into the ether. I hear them. I swear to God I do. Harry wafts into my sleep with a regularity that's astounding considering how effectively he used to elude me. For years after his death I longed for him so badly that I'd squeeze my eyes shut at night and cycle endlessly through visions of him -- Harry, with his head high and nostrils flared, cantering through a meadow; Harry, sniffing the wind, his ears perked and chest as solid as bedrock; Harry, flinging those magnificent brindled limbs forward like a Saddlebred -- hoping they'd seed a dream. But they never did. No matter how fiercely I clung to him, at the critical juncture when I lost control he'd slip away to wherever he was, whatever was left, in that place I wasn't allowed. The few times he did come to me were unbidden and horrifying, and always at the precise moment he crashed to his death beneath me all those years ago. No more. Now he comes to me in plain view, healthy and whole. And I'm thirty-nine, not eighteen. Sometimes I'm on his back and we're cantering through fields of swaying grass. Sometimes I'm standing at his shoulder and he's blowing into my hand, rumbling a greeting from deep within his chest. Sometimes we're even taking fences, one after another in perfect rhythm. More than two decades gone, and he looms as large in my dreamscape as he did in my life. A psychologist would probably say that he's always been there and it's only now that I'm letting him come. That I am finally at the point where I can think about him without falling to pieces. This is what I think a psychologist would say. But I can't be sure, because I won't see one. Both Mutti and Dan have suggested it, separately, although for the life of me I can't figure out why. Both times my reaction was a combination of sputtering indignation and hurt tinged with anger. That, and an instant replaying of all my recent actions and comments to try to discover why, exactly, everybody around mealways thinks I'm nuts. But I must confess that later -- in the privacy of my room, when there was no longer any need to feel defensive -- I found the idea